


no angels

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: SASO 2017 [16]
Category: Prince of Stride: Alternative (Anime)
Genre: Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 19:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11297685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: He remembered a promise, heated and sincere, toprotect Kyousuke. He meant it, still. Yet, how far he’d managed to make good on it, he could not say. Perhaps it had slipped his mind that Kyousuke was fiercest in his imperfections.





	no angels

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 2: Tic-Tac-Toe | Prompt: “Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.”  
> [originally posted here](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/22249.html?thread=12441321#cmt12441321)

This was what it came down to: a rumble that echoed in the street, the diesel-slick smell in the air, and Kyousuke letting his hair down.  
  
Heath leaned back, dug his heel into the brick wall and waited. Kyousuke took his time. He always did, except when he didn’t, and then the wind would change and he would be gone before Heath could blink, swifter than a murmur, than the sighs he left behind.  
  
These days, Heath knew, he was learning to stay. To keep his feet on the ground, even if those restless eyes still sought the sky.   
  
“How did it go?” Heath asked.  
  
Kyousuke did not answer for a while. He sat on the edge of his bike, rested one arm on top of his helmet; in the narrow space between them, the air felt breathless, closer, and Heath could have reached out, reached forward to tuck those flyaway strands behind one ear.  
  
“Tomoe seems happier now,” said Kyousuke, at last.  
  
“Well, that’s good news. Did you ask him how things are with Riku?”  
  
Kyousuke shook his head. “We mostly talked about Stride. And the weather.”   
  
“The weather,” Heath repeated, drawing his brows together.   
  
“It’s been a hot summer. We should go swimming again soon.”  
  
“The _weather_. Honestly… that’s so like you,” said Heath, and chuckled to see the barest hint of a curve tilt at Kyousuke’s lips.   
  
He straightened, peeled himself off the wall and turned to the vending machines next to him. For himself, a carton of milk, for Kyousuke, black coffee that came in a can, and he tossed it over his shoulder without looking, heard Kyousuke catch it easily.  
  
“You could ask him about Riku,” said Kyousuke.  
  
Heath popped the straw out of its wrapper with a crinkling sound, twirled it absently between his fingers. “I guess I could,” he admitted. “But you know, Tomoe never called me while he was abroad. Only you.”  
  
It wasn’t like he was complaining about it, even as the words left his mouth. They didn’t taste tart on his tongue the way they might have. It was a fact, nothing more or less.   
  
Kyousuke met his level gaze for a moment, then cracked his can open and took a slow sip of coffee. Heath watched him tip his head back, the slight bob in his throat, the shadow that he shrugged off with that movement of his. He wore it with such grace usually that it seemed a second skin, a tattoo like a kiss. Without it, the paleness of him still caught Heath by surprise; but it would be a mistake, Heath knew, to equate that part of Kyousuke with fragility, to think all those fracture lines would be enough to shatter him.  
  
He remembered a promise, heated and sincere, to _protect Kyousuke_. He meant it, still. Yet, how far he’d managed to make good on it, he could not say. Perhaps it had slipped his mind that Kyousuke was fiercest in his imperfections.  
  
“I was damaged,” said Kyousuke, his voice low. “You weren’t. Not like us, anyway. I think that’s what Tomoe thought.”  
  
Heath let out a long, resigned breath.   
  
“I’m no angel,” he said, to the sky.  
  
Kyousuke smiled.  
  
“I know that. You should tell Tomoe,” he said.  
  
Overhead, a sliver of sunset lit their back alley ablaze, and Heath raised one hand to shield his eyes. It was no brighter horizon that he yearned for, he or Kyousuke, maybe Tomoe too; merely a corner they could turn together—the next stretch of wide open road—  
  
Whether they would tear down it hand in hand, he did not know, but there had been a time when they had, and surely, surely, that would count for something.


End file.
